The 2023-2024 academic year has already been very challenging for institutions of higher learning. In the midst of college closures, the firing of tenured faculty members, politically motivated bans of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programs, academic program cuts at public universities, attacks on faculty and students protesting the war on Gaza, and attacks on Black faculty... Source ..read more

Leonard Leo, co-chair of the right-wing legal group The Federalist Society and noted coordinator of dark money donations to conservative causes, and Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican donor known for his lavish gifts to Supreme Court justices, have received robust support from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee for refusing to abide by subpoenas issued by Democrats. Source ..read more

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a decisive abortion rights case regarding whether hospitals are obligated to provide abortions in emergency situations under federal law, even in states where abortion is prohibited. “Anti-abortion politicians have brought this case to the nation’s highest court to challenge long-standing federal protections for emergency care abortion care,”... Source ..read more

Hundreds of climate activists gathered at the global headquarters of Citigroup in New York on Wednesday to demand the banking giant stop financing fossil fuel companies. The protests come on the heels of a first-of-its-kind Earth Day hearing where environmental activists from around the world gathered in New York this week to condemn what they call Citigroup’s environmental racism. Source ..read more

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is set to propose new legislation that would allow Arizona abortion providers to become certified faster within California. Newsom has said that the bill is necessary because of an 1864 anti-abortion statute that will soon be re-implemented in the Grand Canyon State, and the high likelihood that Arizonans will travel to California in the months afterward seeking... Source ..read more

On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Mills of Maine signed LD 227, a sanctuary bill that protects transgender and abortion providers and patients from out-of-state prosecution, into law. With this action, Maine becomes the 16th state to explicitly protect transgender and abortion care in state law from prosecution. This follows several bomb threats targeting state legislators after social media attacks from far... Source ..read more

With the support of nearly 80% of the chamber’s lawmakers, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a sprawling foreign aid package that includes $17 billion in unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government as it ramps up its catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip. The final vote on the $95 billion package, which also included military aid for Ukraine and Taiwan, was 79-18... Source ..read more

Last week, the United Auto Workers (UAW) notched a historic victory when workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted decisively to unionize. This is the first triumph in the UAW’s ambitious new campaign to organize over a dozen nonunion auto plants across the U.S., especially in the South. Now the focus moves to Vance, Alabama, where 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers will vote on a... Source ..read more

Rep. Summer Lee, a member of the progressive “Squad,” won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District on Tuesday, fending off an opponent whose campaign was backed by a billionaire Republican megadonor and ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lee, a vocal critic of the Netanyahu government and leading supporter of a cease-fire in Gaza... Source ..read more

Each week, my organization, Project ANAR, receives multiple requests for assistance from Afghans of all ages who are detained in U.S. immigration prisons after crossing the southern border to seek asylum here. And each year, Ramadan brings to the forefront the depths of anti-Muslim racism they experience while navigating the U.S. immigration system. Part of my job as a grassroots immigration... Source ..read more